


Night Sky

by CCNSurvivor



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternative First Meeting, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24188809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CCNSurvivor/pseuds/CCNSurvivor
Summary: "Her eyes are strangely bright even in this darkness, blue and intelligent, assessing. They're also red-rimmed and watery and so very desperate. No more than a beat passes before Zelda breaks the contact, but it’s a beat too long and the knowledge settles uncomfortably in her stomach."Collection of oneshots, following Zelda and Mary as they meet every year to observe a meteor shower.
Relationships: Zelda Spellman/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith
Comments: 17
Kudos: 52
Collections: Madam Spellman May





	1. Bones

**Author's Note:**

> \- trying my hand at some Spellwell - please be kind I'm terrified   
> \- tw: implied suicidal thoughts

It’s a chilly night when she sets off through the woods and towards Greendale’s only hill. The inky expanse of the sky reveals itself to her in little patches at a time, broken into pieces like a mosaic by the reaching arms of the trees that surround her. She is wrapped up in a long fur coat, but the cold finds a way in nonetheless. It seeps through boots and stockings and whispers across her arms until she can feel its sting in her very bones. Her fingers are turning stiff around the handle of the little basket she is carrying until she changes hands and flexes them. It’s hardly the weather for a picnic and she is hardly romantic enough to brave these conditions for a meteor shower alone; no, that would be Hilda; but she is looking forward to the solitude, the uncluttered vastness of the view and the opportunity to think. A great many things are afoot at present and careful deliberation vital if she is hoping to advance her own chess piece.

Wind blows through the cover of trees as she emerges out in the open in one swift rush, rattling branches and mussing her hair. It’s futile to smooth it, but she tries anyhow, strands of red dancing in front of her eyes. She clambers on, losing her footing, leaning into another gust of air, applying just a tiny twist of magic to keep her upright until she can see over the top of the hill…and realises she isn’t alone.   
  
“Satan in hell.”   
  
Her lungs are aching and breath hitches trapped between her ribs like a bruise. Heat pools at her back, an uncomfortable contrast to the cold.   
  
The figure doesn’t move or stir, save for little shudders that rock it in its entirety. She takes two steps before she can discern it’s a woman hunched over her legs, chin resting on her knees, and another two to tap into her energies. Thankfully it’s a mortal, susceptible to magic and therefore easily moved along. If she wanted company she would have stayed at the Mortuary.   
  
“Oh, goodness!” Regrettably the woman notices her first. She twists herself out of her position on the ground, presses the heel of her hand into her glasses and touches her hair up with the other. It doesn’t comply, and the wind whisks even more strands out of the otherwise stern bun, making her look tousled and exposed. “You gave me a fright.”   
  
Her eyes are strangely bright even in this darkness, blue and intelligent, assessing. They're also red-rimmed and watery and so very desperate. No more than a beat passes before Zelda breaks the contact, but it’s a beat too long and the knowledge settles uncomfortably in her stomach.   
  
“I do apologise. I had assumed I would be the only one to observe the meteor shower.”   
  
Her words prick at the other, and surely she must understand that she is no longer wanted here.   
  
“Oh, goodness!”   
  
Those words again. Zelda does not see the need to disguise her distaste and rolls her eyes.   
  
“Was that tonight?”   
  
“Yes.”   
  
She side-steps around her and moves to the very edge of the hill, testing the ground with the tip of her shoes. It’s soft and mouldable, and she sinks down upon it with effortless grace. Her back remains to the stranger. She opens up her basket and fishes out the selection of sandwiches, the little box with olives, a slice of brownie.   
  
“It’s frightfully cold up here.”   
  
Zelda swallows a groan, but even as her head whips towards the woman, as an insult forms on her tongue, she knows she will not speak. Because she recognises something in that thin voice, in those vacant eyes.   
  
“Yes, rather. But I do not intend to stay long. Perhaps you will join me?”   
  
The chasms inside oneself are usually deepest.   
  
“Oh, I-I suppose I could. It would be silly to leave now, wouldn’t it?”   
  
“Quite.”   
  
She pats the ground next to her and looks out over the forest while the stranger takes a seat. Her fingers blindly unfurl a sandwich, and she passes it to her in silence.   
  
“Have we met? I feel like we have.”   
  
“Unlikely.”   
  
“My name is Mary Wardwell, I work at Baxter High?” She accepts the food and somehow as she is pulling away their pinkies brush.   
  
“My niece recently started there.”   
  
Mary Wardwell feels like ice, like death, but her softness lingers.   
  
“That must be it then. What’s her name?”   
  
“Sabrina.”   
  
“Spellman, yes. Family resemblance. You must be the other aunt.”   
  
“Astutely noticed.”   
  
She feels her scowl and finds herself laughing, popping an olive into her mouth to stifle the sound. “I was hoping to be alone tonight.”   
  
Miss Wardwell takes a bite of her sandwich but already her other hand unfurls impatiently. “Actually, as was I.” She punctuates each word with a feisty flick of her fingers. “But life is full of twists and turns.”   
  
“Amen,” she mocks, tilting her head long enough to look at the little cross she wears on a chain around her neck, and then helps herself to another olive.   
  
Miss Wardwell’s fingers close around it and hastily she shoves it under the flimsy fabric of her cardigan where it disappears from sight. No wonder she was freezing.   
  
Zelda sighs and puts the food aside, unbuttons her coat and with a flourish wraps it around the incredulous woman who stiffens marginally underneath her touch.   
  
“Whatever it is, it is hardly worth the trouble, Miss Wardwell.” She looks at her briefly again, eyes skimming along the sharp lines of her jaw, at the tension that’s holding her lips pressed together. “Now, since we have successfully ruined each other’s evening, let us pretend we both came here to watch the sky.”   
  
She unfolds her own sandwich and devours it in silence, granting privacy and peace. When it is time to share the brownie, their fingers meet once more, and to her surprise Mary Wardwell prolongs the touch. Her pinkie hooks around hers, like a thank you, perhaps, or maybe just as proof of her strength and resilience. And she can feel her in her bones, underneath her skin, and knows that she will live there from here on out. 


	2. Cold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- time lines may be somewhat altered here and there  
> \- thanks for your comments :)

Rain washes down the windows of the hearse, reducing night sky and street lamps into a smear of black and amber. Zelda stares outside, past the tap tap tap of the windscreen wipers, but her eyes are unfocused. It’s the end of July and storms are a regular occurrence, the earth scorched and brittle and gasping for these thick droplets of water. Tension has swelled and grown, forming dense and denser clouds that groan and heave. The cedars, too, creak and sway under this force like dark, ominous shapes bending from side to side, akin to wraiths or boogeymen. The stuff of nightmares. But not for Zelda for whom ghosts have always been hiding in plain sight like careful knots woven into the very fabric of Greendale.   
  
It’s the familiar figure that catches her eye and startles her out of her rumination. For a couple of seconds she watches her slender form push and struggle against the wind with rugged persistence. She starts the engine of the hearse and lets its headlights flare up before easing out of the parking lot and into the street. Trailing after her slowly until she glances over her shoulder, blue eyes visibly frightened even behind the thick sheen of rain that coats her glasses. Probably mistaking the hearse for a bad omen.   
  
“For Satan’s sake,” she finds herself muttering, puts her foot on the brake and awkwardly angles her body to thrust open the passenger door. “Why don’t you get in before you catch your death?”   
  
“Oh, Miss Spellman!” Going by voice alone, Mary Wardwell hunches over clumsily to peer into the car. Just to make sure. “I thought for a minute-“ She stops herself and shakes her head, water dripping down into the car.   
  
Zelda nearly withdraws her offer then, but curiosity and perhaps something else – softer, rawer and therefore better left unexamined - prohibit her. She leans back in her seat and watches as Miss Wardwell clambers inside, shoes slipping only once on the slick floor mat before she catches herself and proceeds with a kind of nimble elegance.   
  
“How are you then?”   
  
They have barely seen each other since the moment on the hill top and most certainly not interacted. Zelda has seen to it that her sister remains in charge of their niece’s mortal education. She frankly lacks the patience.   
  
“Fine, thank you.” Mary Wardwell studies her still over the top of fogged up glasses, although her gaze is jittery and afraid to linger anywhere for too long. So Zelda layers her tone with steel. “Better than one can say about you.”   
  
Her chuckle is frail and breathy; a frown blossoms alongside it. She uses the heel of her hand to push down her soggy skirt and finally snatches her glasses from her nose and starts wiping them on her cardigan. “My boyfriend proposed to me.”   
  
Boyfriend, she grimaces, why in Satan’s name is she doing this to herself?   
  
“Well, you certainly seem ecstatic.”  
  
Miss Wardwell looks up at that, bare without her glasses, softer too and somehow she is reaching for her, fingertip skimming along her jawline, entangling in a strand of dark hair that continues to stubbornly curl and frizz.   
  
“I-I know, it’s awful. I don’t understand what’s wrong with me either. He’s such a sweet and lovely man. But when he asked me, I-“   
  
Zelda withdraws her hand and leans back, arms crossed in front of her chest, suddenly uncomfortable. “Miss Wardwell, I am hardly the type to offer marital advice. But it strikes me that something might not be as it ought to be when you favour a walk in the rain to an answer.”   
  
The woman sighs; her hands tremble a little as she puts her glasses back on. “I told him I wanted to go for a drive. By the time I made it outside, I realised I didn’t have keys and, well, what was I to do? Embarrassing enough…”   
  
Zelda rolls her eyes and leans forward again, flipping the glove compartment open to reveal a stashed away hip flask. It does not escape her notice that Miss Wardwell’s knees imperceptibly rise to meet her, before she catches the direction of her hand and stiffly lowers them again.   
  
“Do help yourself. It’ll warm you up.”   
  
She starts the engine and does a U-turn, heading away from Greendale and towards the woods.  
  
“He really is a decent man,” Mary repeats, clasping the flask like a lifeline. When she takes a swig at last, her knuckles turn white and her cheeks red, and Zelda laughs, delighted at the contrast. “His name is Adam.”

“Mary and Adam, how positively biblical.”   
  
She takes another gulp, demonstrating a surprising taste for the spirit and groans. “I think I would frighten him.”   
  
“Frighten him?” Zelda steals a second glance while she drives. “I cannot possibly imagine how you might frighten anyone.”   
  
They make it to the foot of the hill before Mary answers. “I have a…secret…interest in the occult.”   
  
The car purrs to a stop and they sit in silence, listening to the smattering of rain.   
  
“Books, figures, a-anything! It’s fascinating!”   
  
The splash of colour on her cheeks now has less to do with the alcohol, and more with her enthusiasm and Zelda finds herself quite enraptured. She almost reaches out to her again but at the last minute chooses to occupy her fingers otherwise. Wind drifts into the hearse as she rolls down the window, and Mary shivers. Her nose wrinkles when she sees her light a cigarette, but she offers no word of protest.  
  
“I’m not certain why you’re telling me this.” She takes the first drag and blows a white plume of smoke out into the rain-washed air.   
  
“You know, neither am I.”   
  
Quiet emerges between them, and it’s a comfortable kind of stillness, one that brings calm. They both unwind just a little. It’s tangible, this shift. It stretches on naturally until Mary looks at her. She knows because she can feel her eyes carefully travelling the length of her profile.   
  
“Why are you out and about tonight, Miss Spellman? I know there’s another meteor shower, but the weather…” She drifts off, words crumbling into little bouts of laughter until even they die down. She stares at the flask in her lap until Zelda focuses on her.   
  
“My brother Edward came here to ruminate. It was his quiet spot away from the family.”   
  
“Sabrina’s father?”   
  
“Yes. She is turning 16 in a couple of months. It’s an important age, and it goes hand in hand with a rite of passage in our family.”   
  
“That sounds exciting!”   
  
“I rather concur, but I have begun to wonder of late if this is the right step.” She blinks and a groove appears between her brows as she frowns and adjusts her previous statement. “I’m certain this is what her father would have wanted.”   
  
Mary nods sympathetically and on impulse reaches out and takes her hands. She is cold still, but her icy fingers are not unwelcome.   
  
“You can only do your best. I’m sure he knows that.”   
  
The simplicity of mortals, Zelda thinks. But it is hardly fair. She runs her thumb along Mary’s index finger, just skin grazing skin.   
  
“Then by that logic, my dear, your Adam must know too.”   
  
She willingly reciprocates the touch, drawing a cool line of heat from the tip of her finger down to her wrist. Daring to explore across an expanse of skin that rises eagerly in gooseflesh to meet her.   
  
“Another moment longer?”   
  
Zelda tilts her head back towards the window and resumes smoking. “Certainly.”


	3. Fog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zelda has noticed that Miss Wardwell is not Miss Wardwell after Lilith took her face. She finds her and adjusts her memory to the best of her ability. This takes place directly afterwards.

She is drifting through a murky void, weightless, entirely suspended. Cocooned. Almost, but not quite. There are sounds akin to whispers, akin to branches scraping across windows, and a cold that has teeth. For a little while she searches the dark with unseeing eyes, feels into every corner only to encounter the same hollow echo of her own existence. She tires. Weary, she succumbs to herself.   
  
“Miss Wardwell?”   
  
The darkness has a voice now. It claws and pulls, succinct, demanding. It fills out the space between her and the void somehow. Too sharp to be a comfort. And yet. It bites and tears at the edges of hopelessness.   
  
“Miss Wardwell!”   
  
Darkness grows a face that’s pale and annoyed. Red curls, red lips. Green eyes that roar.   
  
“Miss. Wardwell.”   
  
And arms and hands and fingers. They ghost along her like waves lapping at stone. Smoothing, softening, quietly persisting. Until she emerges into herself. No longer shapeless and dark and cold. But aching and brittle and bare.  
  
“Miss Spellman?”  
  
She blinks and looks around, surprised to discover herself sitting on her little sofa in her cottage. Her hands are lying on her knees, palms turned upwards, trembling. She has no recollection of anything of consequence. Cannot say when the other woman arrived, who made tea or what they happened to be talking about. But she knows with deep, gnawing certainty that too much time has passed. Too much time in darkness.   
  
“Forgive me,” she starts and immediately stops to clear her throat, “my-my mind must have wandered.”   
  
“No harm done,” Miss Spellman responds, but something jars between the flippancy of her tone and the look in her eyes. Those eyes that are deep like lakes, if you can manage to see past their glistening surface. Mary has found herself falling into them many times before. “Don’t go drifting again, Miss Wardwell.”   
  
She straightens, reprimanded. Squares her shoulders until her back protests, until she can envision herself sitting on a pew. Upright and honest. Her chin tilts up imperceptibly.  
  
“I wasn’t, Miss Spellman.” She doesn’t mean to sound prideful. It doesn’t sit well on her tongue, too big, too sour. Her gaze drops guiltily towards her lap. “Forgive me.”   
  
“Oh, for pity’s sake. What do you have to be sorry for now? You’re like Mother Teresa.”   
  
Miss Spellman’s hands retract from her own knees, breaking the mirror image. She snatches a cigarette seemingly out of thin air and lights it with an impatient flick. Smoke drifts through the room and as if in response the embers in her fireplace crackle and break.   
  
“Did we have plans tonight?”   
  
Miss Spellman brings the cigarette close to her mouth and inhales. The action smudges a fleck of lipstick on her bottom lip, and Mary looks away. She reaches for a tea cup with uncertain hands and finds the liquid inside has gone cold.   
  
“No, we did not. I seem to have rather surprised you.”   
  
She sets the cup down again, untouched, and pushes her glasses all the way back against her nose. “I don’t feel like myself, I’m sorry.”   
  
Miss Spellman exhales another cloud of smoke and punctuates the new apology with a roll of her eyes. “Your hands were icy again. Have you been wandering outside on your own?”   
  
She follows her gaze towards the window which is framed by a thin layer of snow.  
  
“I-“ Mary blinks in puzzlement. “I don’t know. What day is it?”   
  
“It’s nearly January,” the other woman answers immediately, as though there is nothing strange about that question, as though she has expected it.   
  
“January…” Mary repeats and a tremor passes through her.

Her body sways and for a moment she teeters on the brink of the sofa. But Miss Spellman’s arm catches her around her waist and steadies her firmly.   
  
“Come now, Miss Wardwell, there is no need for this.”   
  
The burgundy threads of her pullover do nothing to hide the warmth of her palm. Her touch sears her to the bone. And still she shivers.   
  
“Maybe I am coming down with something. Maybe I should go and rest.”   
  
“Yes.” Miss Spellman’s hand flees back to her own lap. It contracts as if pained and then opens again. “You probably should.”   
  
There is a beat of silence in which neither of them move. Then Miss Spellman’s nervous fingers inch closer, across hills and valleys of fabric until they brush up against hers.   
  
“Permit me to help you? I can hardly leave, knowing you might have fainted.”   
  
Within the gruff tone of delivery there are specks of tenderness, and Mary commits them to her heart even as she hides her own little smile in the creases of her pullover.   
  
“Thank you.”   
  
She stands up and wobbles, and her living room spins, but Miss Spellman does not come to her aid. She waits for her to find her own balance, those green eyes focused but guarded once more. Mary pushes on, determined to make it now. Her bedroom is only a couple of steps down the corridor, after all. It’s bare and simple, but the sight of those walls, those few pieces of furniture are a comfort. She sinks down on her bed and presses a hand to her heart which flutters and trembles with exertion. When she finally looks up, Miss Spellman is still hovering in the doorway.   
  
“Won’t you come in?”   
  
Red lips part then pinch together.   
  
“I thought you might like privacy to change.”   
  
She turns her back, but Mary does not yet move. Her eyes cling to every perfectly coiffed curl that falls over her shoulders. Like a waterfall of fire. Like a veil, or a bright distraction, shielding all that is soft and frail from view. Her throat runs dry. She looks at her lap, her shoes, the floor. Her next breath is audible to them both.   
  
She removes the necklace first, pushes it deep into the drawer of her nightstand. The cross clinks and clanks against the wood as if in protest. Mary takes another breath. Then she peels off her clothes, letting the soft cotton of her pyjamas soothe her burning skin.   
  
Outside her bedroom window, snow is building up a wall of white. Her gaze remains on it until she can almost discern every last particle. Or perhaps nothing at all.   
  
“May I?”   
  
She feels Miss Spellman’s weight settle on the mattress behind her and allows it to pull her back. Fingertips skim through her hair, free it from its clip until it tumbles down with abandon. Her voice has slipped and hidden between her ribs, so she merely nods. And then there’s the steady stroke of a brush, the caress of a hand and the warm scent of that familiar perfume.   
  
Mary’s eyes drift closed as her head tips back; the pressure on her scalp is measured and calming. She sighs, quietly into the space between them, and for just a moment the brush strokes falter, then resume.   
  
“Miss Spellman?”   
  
A quick rush of bravery overcomes her. She opens her eyes and tips her head back further until she is almost leaning, almost falling into the other. She focuses on chin and lips and nose. The eyes are too dangerous still; they might just be her undoing.   
  
“I would very much like to know your first name.”   
  
Surprise registers in the delicate arching of eyebrows.   
  
“Zelda.”   
  
Mary nods to herself and straightens, holds vowels and consonants on her tongue but only in silence. To try out their weight. She finds the way beneath the covers on her own, legs tucked close to her chest, arms wrapped around them.   
  
“Was there another meteor shower tonight?”   
  
Her question holds the other woman arrested in the doorway into which she has retreated again. “I do believe there was.”   
  
“What a shame I missed it.”   
  
Tension pulls her back straight, she can observe it happening from her place in the bed. “Forgive me.”   
  
The sharp tap of her heels spells her departure, and as the front door opens and closes, a cool breeze flows through the cottage. In Mary’s bedroom, the scent of Zelda Spellman clings stubbornly to every surface.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- yes, Zelda's "Forgive me" is also for having had to adjust her memory


End file.
